The Climate Listening Project, an Asheville-based collaborative storytelling effort to collect and share stories about how climate change is impacting lives how people are working for solutions, is in Belize to collect more stories. Here’s the latest update from the project’s Dayna Reggero:

We’re getting ready to travel from North Carolina to Belize to Washington, D.C. to listen to stories that open our hearts and minds to the interconnectedness of all living creatures on our planet through the impact of climate change on a beloved bird. We are currently collaborating with Forsyth Audubon, The National Audubon Society, Audubon International Alliances Program, Audubon NC, and Belize Audubon Society. We’ll be listening and filming to weave together a story about the impacts of climate change through the lens of the Wood Thrush, which the Audubon Birds & Climate Report predicts will soon lose much of its current breeding range.

The Climate Listening Project started in Asheville while collaborating with the Sierra Club and the Years of Living Dangerously docu-series that was filming here at that time. MountainTrue began researching to find out if there were climate stories in Western North Carolina. Interviews took place throughout the region, we listened about 50 stories, and I went out in April 2014 to film the first video, Asheville Rain. We learned about how 2013 was the wettest summer ever recorded in Asheville. We starting sharing photos, stories and videos to show hopeful conversations on climate and community.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) joined the collaborative effort and we began filming a trailer to share what we were hearing about the impacts people were seeing, the fears and hopes they were feeling, and the many ways that they were building a resilient future. We listened to stories from fishermen, business owners, scientists and community members. We released the trailer in Asheville on October 2014.

Throughout 2015, we listened to climate stories in Asheville, throughout the Southeast, nationally, and around the world. Features were shared and collaborations were connected around faith and food to help others start or accelerate climate conversations in their communities.

We were invited to Paris to share stories around the #COP21 Paris Climate Talks in December 2015. Climate Listening Project filmmaker Andrea Desky of K23 Media was there to film the artistic and historic events. Plus, people from around the world attended a screening of our Cultivating Resilience Feature video during a Regeneration International event featuring Climate Listening Project adviser and Cultivating Resilience scientist Laura Lengnick.

The project has been featured and and tools have been used by about 50 websites from organization websites to blogs and magazines, businesses, and podcasts. The two biggest social media shares of Project videos this past year reached 2.7 million people. That I know of, filming, screenings and workshops took place in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, New York, Washington DC, Montana, California, Ohio, Oklahoma and Maine.

The Asheville nonprofit Food Connection is partnering with Wicked Weed Brewing and its Cultura restaurant, the YMCA of Western North Carolina, and Red Wing Enterprises for the event aimed at helping service industry workers.

One of the biggest immediate impacts has been the release of about 200 people from the Buncombe County jail, a long-sought after goal by some local officials who want to convert the county jail from a holding pen for low-level, nonviolent, poor suspects to a lockup reserved for serious offenders.